I used to get most of my comics from this store that was next door to the supermarket my mom shopped at. My memories are a bit fuzzy -- it wasn't a comic shop per se, in that they sold things like newspapers, sports cards, magazines, candy, etc. But the owner or one of the employees must have been a comic guy, because they had a lot of stuff that you would ordinarily find at a comic shop. In addition to current issues, they had a sizable back issue collection. They also sold bags and boards, a few graphic novels, and even some toys and model kits. It was a pretty cool store and I loved hanging out there. The X-books were the big thing when I started buying there. I remember buying Wolverine #1 and Excalibur #1 from that store.

There was also another store next to my father's work that I used to hang out at prior to the above shop. It was called Geppi's Comic World, and if that name sounds familiar, yes it was owned by THAT Geppi -- Steve Geppi, the founder of Diamond Comic Distributors. Back before he became the kingpin of comic distributing, he had a chain of comic shops in the DC Metro area.

My Dad bought me my first comics. I started picking out my own books in the late 60's when the Batman TV show was on. Cover prices were 12/15 cents. I bought DC, Marvel & Charlton titles. I bought my books at Davis Trading Post in Norwood, PA. It was a news stand/tobacco store. It was across the street from the grocery store that my parents shopped at. After shopping we would go across the street & I would be allowed to get 3-4 books. My childhood was riding my bike, reading comics, watching Batman & Star Trek.

My first comics were bought from Walgreens in late 1989. I picked up Avengers #309 and my brother got Incredible Hulk #361. They were each a dollar.

I then got a set of comics from Santa for Christmas. I know it included Silver Surfer #15 and 28. I then started buying comics mostly in comic stores. There were 3 stores in my neighborhood, though a fourth opened briefly. I was later told it was actually a front for something. But my dad would take me to stores all around the city and sometimes pick up comics. I got a lot of Marvel grab bags I think. And tried to collect Transformers and later Avengers. I never seemed too concerned that the issues were always in the middle of stories. Later in life, I would become obsessed with beginnings and endings. At the time, I enjoyed the ride.

I was not a newsstand guy. I think I barely noticed it. I went straight to the back issue bins in comic stores. It's because I was perpetually behind. I wanted the issues either preceding or following what I had, but, being 8, I wasn't necessarily able to buy things every month. I think I often forgot to check the newsstand, figuring the store didn't have the issue if it wasn't in the box. I do recall a day of revelation when the next issue was on the rack instead of in the box. And sometimes the store kept the past few months of comics on the rack.

As the years passed and I grew more certain of what I wanted, and clarified this idea that comics came out every month, rather than just all existing in the boxes, I started subscribing and receiving comics in the mail. This was my standard by 1994 or so, now being pretty obsessed with comics.

The earliest comic book I remember having/buying was Batman 250 which had a 20 cent cover price and came out in the summer of '73-I was 4 and didn't start nursery school until that fall. I didn't start getting comics regularly until they had gone up to 25 cents, which coincidentally was how much I got each week for allowance for doing my chores.

Each week my dad would take me to a little drug store called Ideal Drugs which was next to the gas station we filled up the car at in a little plaza it shared with a music store (instruments not records) and a pizzeria where we would get pizza every other week or so. I would have to decide between getting a comic book or a pack of sports cards (baseball or football depending on the season) and a candy bar (card 15 cents, candy 10 cents), Usually I scanned the spinner rack for some cover that caught my eye and took that home, but if nothing caught my fancy a pack of sports cards and a candy bar (usually a roll of Necco wafers because they lasted longer) it was. This continued up through 1977 when we moved, though cover prices had increased to 30 cents (my dad let me keep making the same choice though-1 comic or cards/candy, he even sprung for the extra if I picked up a larger sized more expensive comic like an annual.

There was another pharmacy on the other side of town, which is where we had our prescriptions filled so we only went there when someone was sick. It was part of a local or regional chain called Genovese Drugs, and they did not carry new comics, but they did have a in of comics that were 5/$1 (cover price 25 cents each) that I think were unsold copies that had been taken off the shelves and "returned" for credit by a lot of other stores that Genovese had then acquired for a song and blew out at a discount to turn a profit on. They were books that were 6 months to a year out of date (so recent back issues per se) in no particular order and just thrown in a bin so oftentimes beat up in condition, but usually I got to pick out 5 when we went.

The other way I got a lot of comics at the time (well mostly after we had moved in '77) was through the polybagged 3 packs of comics that were sold at stores (in this case the grocery store we went to carried them) and if I went grocery shopping with my mom and behaved and didn't ask for anything I would usually be allowed to pick out one of the bags to take home and discover what was in the middle of the 2 books I could see. I would get several of these bags as a stocking stuffer at Christmas time too.

The only other time I would get comics would be if we were going on vacation (we would stop at Ideal Drugs (or after we moved at the Dairy Mart down the street from our new house) I would be able to get a few dollars worth of comics for the car trip, or if I was sick, my dad would bring home comics for me to read while I was laid up (I remember having the chicken pox in the summer of '76 in the middle of a 100 degree heat wave and my dad stopped at Ideal Drugs every day on the way home form work and picked up 4-5 comics for me to read that night/the next day to keep my occupied and not thinking about scratching the itches.

Then in early 1979 my mom decided I was far too preoccupied with comics and super-heroes and had an overactive imagination, so made me quit comics cold turkey. I wasn't allowed to buy new ones or read the ones I had (which lasted for 2 years and a another move to Maine) which only prompted me to focus my attention on Star Wars, sci-fi, fantasy and arcade games-during that time I discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lloyd Alexander, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, D&D, Space Invaders, Asteroids and Battlezone. Ironically, it was me getting ill and my dad deciding to bring home comics for me to read while I was sick that caused my mom to relent and keep the box of comics she had taken into custody back to me (to her credit she didn't throw them out, just kept them hidden and took them along when we moved). However, money was very tight during those years and I had zero allowance, so unless I found an odd job (or collected returnable bottles for the refund) I had no spending money to buy new comics, so purchases were few and far between (one of the random purchases I did get was Miller's DD issues 174 and 175 at a little convenience store near the park where a summer kids jobs program had put me to work cleaning up the park for a few bucks and on the upside they let s keep the returnable bottles to cash in for more money too, my friends and I stopped at the store intent on buying candy and soda with the money, but I saw the DD issues in a rack in front of the register and had to have them instead (it's always choosing comics or candy I know).

I didn't start regularly getting comics again though until '85 when I turned 16 and had my own job. What comics I did get int he intervening years were usually me taking birthday or Christmas money and getting a subscription (it's how I got most of Shooter's second tenure on Avengers and a chunk of Stern's run on Amazing Spider-Man including the Juggernaut issues). The end result was that I mostly bought comics that caught my eye rather tan particular series as a kid, with avengers being the exception, but the few ties I tried to follow a series, things like the DDD causing fill-ins (Avengers 144 to 145 comes to mind) in the middle of continued stories or a cross-over (the Avengers vs. Attuma storyline in the 150s continuing in Super-villain Team Up made it confusing as all get out as to how I was supposed to follow a story, so I just got and read a lot of random stuff.

-M

My earliest memories of looking at comics on the newsstand go back to the early 80's. I distinctly remember paging through Savage Sword of Conan magazines. If my mom knew what was inside the pages... Hey, it was better Conan than Playboy, right?

I had comics bought for me and given to me since I could focus enough to appreciate them (probably 1980 on) but I decided to start seriously collecting comics after getting a two-pack at a truck stop in 1986. (Iron Man and the Hulk, for the record.) Soon after this I got a hold of early collections of Iron Man: Demon in the Bottle and X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga and I was official hooked.

That's interesting, because my old local drugstore, of all places, carried Savage Sword of Conan on their magazine rack. I believe it was an Eckard's.